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Frege, Gottlob (1848-1925)

A scientist can
hardly meet with
anything more
undesirable than to
have the foundations
give way just as the
work is finished. I
was put in this
position by a letter
from Mr. Bertrand
Russell when the
work was nearly
through the press.

In Scientific
American, May
1984, p. 77.

Frederick the Great (1712-1786)

To your care and recommendation am I indebted for having replaced a half-blind mathematician with a mathematician with both eyes, which will especially please the anatomical members of my Academy.[To D'Alembert about Lagrange. Euler had vacated the post.]

Frayn, Michael

For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.

Constructions. 1974.

Frankland, W.B.

Whereas at the outset geometry is reported to have concerned herself with the measurement of muddy land, she now handles celestial as well as terrestrial problems: she has extended her domain to the furthest bounds of space.

Hodder and Stoughton, The Story of Euclid. 1901.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757)

Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married.

Eloge de le Leibniz.

Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757)

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

Preface sur l'Utilite des Mathematiques et de la Physique, 1729.

Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880)

Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?

Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880)

Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Fisher, Ronald Aylmer (1890 - 1962)

Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

Fisher, Ronald Aylmer (1890-1962)

To call in the
statistician after
the experiment is
done may be no more
than asking him to
perform a postmortem
examination: he may
be able to say what
the experiment died
of.